


Golden

by hops



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Cuddling, Fluff, M/M, happy boys, postcanon, prose, soft n tender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 10:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12628893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hops/pseuds/hops
Summary: Beneath a downy white blanket, stuffed and soft with feathers, Magnus lay entangled with Taako. They nuzzled nose-to-nose, eyes shut, breathing steady and calm. Two fingers wandered into Taako’s silken blonde hair and curled themselves in. Everything about him was beautiful. Illuminated. He wanted to seal himself in this moment forever.





	Golden

**Author's Note:**

> For Katie @smokysardonyx <3

The whole room was sunset gold. 

Light streamed through the sheer white curtains as they swayed gently in the breeze of the open window. Summer was fading fast, but was taking her time for one last evening to kiss the earth goodbye, just before autumn would sweep up the world in a whirl of orange and yellow and paint the trees with mirth. The room was warm; everything glowed soft and sweet. The only sound was the wind passing softly through the waving green leaves. 

Beneath a downy white blanket, stuffed and soft with feathers, Magnus lay entangled with Taako. They nuzzled nose-to-nose, eyes shut, breathing steady and calm. Two fingers wandered into Taako’s silken blonde hair and curled themselves in. Everything about him was beautiful. Illuminated. He wanted to seal himself in this moment forever. 

The sheets, warm and clean, enveloped them both in softness. Magnus shifted closer, afraid that if he moved too much or too fast that the crystalline moment would dissolve as a snowflake on his tongue. He always feared the possibility of Taako’s memory slipping from him again. He was the flame that’d gone out without Magnus’s knowing, and as he grabbed for the trail of smoke in his wake, he’d found his hands empty in the dark. 

But his love had been returned with a silvery sip of ichor. The flask had clattered to the stone floor below him and as he looked up, there he was.  _ Of course  _ he was. He had always been. 

Magnus opened his eyes for fear that this was another dream brought to life on a bedroll by a dying fire, sheltered by the tall trees of the Wilds. He’d reached out and touched Taako’s delicate hand as he slept, wondering why he felt so  _ familiar.  _ Every bone in his body ached for home. Even in Raven’s Roost, where he had grown and loved and lived and lost and had built his home from nothing, he had felt a space between his ribs where some forgotten memory was supposed to be; where Taako’s lingering presence was meant to curl beside his heart and live forever, tucked away safe and sound and sleeping. 

As he looked at his love, he found his eyes shut peacefully. A small, perhaps unconscious, smile had curled his lips. His breath came and went from his lungs in the quiet. It was a miracle they were both still here. A million white strings had been pulled taut by the goddess of fate herself, threading them into crimson, entangled with silver and gold forever. Istus had consecrated their love as a necessary piece of her tapestry. They were immortalized in her needlework, in their story, in their song. They had conquered the unconquerable. They had stood amongst the incarnation of infinite darkness and cast it out with light. 

And after running for so long, it was so nice to simply rest. Taako was a picture of peace beside him. They had carried the embers of grief of a hundred devoured worlds. And they still yielded each of their flames, but their light burned bright now. Hope had dawned on the world that day, and in its wake, they rebuilt. 

And now, in the quiet, they were rebuilding each other, too.

It took all of his will just to stir Taako from his rest, but his presence hooked him into orbit, encircling and rotating around the center that Taako so faithfully occupied. He reached up to touch Taako’s cheek, cast blush pink by the warmth of their bodies pressed together and the sunset’s hue that’d shone through the translucent curtains. 

Somewhere far away, two birds sang. 

_ “I love you,”  _ his tender whisper came, trailing along the elf’s gold-trimmed ear before waking him. 

Taako didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His reflected, reciprocal love was already living within Magnus, 

Instead, Taako curled into him and laced his legs with Magnus’s. The distinction of where one ended and the other began had fully blurred. As their noses met and pressed and scrunched into smiles, Taako opened his eyes, too. His gaze burned amber and warm and thrilled Magnus anew each time their eyes met. No amount of time could pull the electric thrill from his spine each time they touched. No number of lives lived could tire him from the comfort of Taako’s breathing, beside him as he was forever meant to be. 

A dark century bore a halcyon summer; they took their time just to breathe the air, free from the tarrish black that had encroached the edges of their world and nearly took them over. They traveled in impossible globes of glass above crumbled statues of the gods that had struck them down with their judgements. They picked flowers and lay in the grass on a hill not unlike the one at Legato. Magnus had hummed the old songs, the ones that he’d never truly forgotten, even in sore static headache. They cooked again. They tasted spices and stew and wine and sweets and anything they could imagine that Taako had thought he’d lost in carelessness and idiocy. His mind returned to him, and so did his strength. His heart. 

Magnus tilted his chin to kiss him. He tasted of afternoon strawberries, shared on the porch of the house Magnus had built and called their home. The breeze had whirled and weaved around them and fluttered through Taako’s hair, haloing him in blonde wisps for one brilliant moment, sealed in Magnus’s memory forever. Their lips stained berry red.

The spread of his lissom hands across Magnus’s back drew him even closer. Taako sighed against his ear; the feeling was heaven. 

The air was warm and summer-sweet, and Taako’s skin was soft and spice and saffron. He breathed in and got lost in the curtained waves of golden hair. He wanted to get lost within him, in this bed, in this room, in this dying gasp of their sweetest summer. 

In this world that they’d made. 

In this ending they’d earned. 


End file.
